See my judgment of July 27,2025 in liquidations (Tel Aviv) 30215-07-24 Bank of Jerusalem et al. v. Granit Building Reinforcement Engineering Ltd."40 et al.
A civil appeal was filed against this judgment 13991-08-25 Bank of Jerusalem Ltd. et al. v. Shiri Shalev et al.
At the appeal stage, a compromise was reached between the parties. In the framework of the appeal, the judgment that is the subject of the appeal was annulled, without elaboration and without a decision on the issue. As a result, the appeal was dismissed in a judgment of December 3,2025.
- In the current framework, I will refer again to the judgment inCivil Appeal 2457/24 Oz Rahamim et al. v. Adv. Alona Baumgarten (14.10.2024) in a panel of the Honorable Justices Amit, Mintz, and Stein.
There it was determined that the assignment of the contractor's rights to the lending bank in itself does not prevent apartment buyers from raising money against the bank, Any claim of right that they had against the contractor, of course, subject to the provisions of the individual contract signed in their case.
The appeal was dismissed by a majority of Justices Mintz and Stein in contrast to the dissenting opinion of the Honorable President Justice Amit.
See, in particular, the words of the Honorable Justice Stein there, paragraphs 3-7, which analyzes the relationship in the contractor-apartment buyer-lending bank triangle:
Indeed, in a world free of risks and transaction costs, the contractor and the apartment buyers would not need a lending bank and would have made an agreement between them for the construction and purchase of apartments without involving the bank in the transaction. This would have lowered the price. However, a world free of risks and transaction costs is an imaginary world. The Honorable Justice Stein points out that in the real world in which we live, the contractor may find himself in liquidity difficulties and even find himself in insolvency (as happened in the case there and in the case before it). Buyers of apartments on paper therefore need the protection mechanism, which protects the funds of apartment buyers, who deposit the purchase fees of their apartments with the bank, against its undertaking that this money will be used for one purpose only: the construction and delivery of the apartments (ibid., paragraph 5). In my opinion, to this should be added the delivery of the apartments On time.